TrackMania United Forever

June 30,2008 - For those of you who were around in the early 1990’s, you might remember a game called Stunts (4D Sports Driving in Europe) from Broderbund. Trackmania United Forever seems to take quite a few cues from that classic game. Thankfully for all involved, it’s taken all of the right cues.

If you’re looking for a racing game that will deliver ultra-realistic driving physics and photo-realistic graphics, you’d be better served elsewhere. What Trackmania is and always will be is a game that puts the focus squarely on completely crazy, over-the-top arcade style racing. The cars are quick and nimble, and can seemingly turn on a dime. They feel more like light Radio Controlled cars than big heavy hunks of glass and metal. Pair that with the ability to steer in mid air and you can see that this game isn’t at all going for realism. Why should it when it’s doing a great job of being fantastic and whimsical?

This is the sort of racing game that you can jump into and play for a few minutes, have a good time, and then jump out and do something else. Ending that statement there would be selling this game far short, since Trackmania United Forever also has the uncanny ability to suck away your will to do anything else during a play session.

You can play the game either by yourself or with friends. There are a number of different race types, including Races, Platform challenges, Puzzle Challenges and Stunt Challenges. The Puzzle and Stunt Challenges are the most interesting of the race types, since they require you to think a bit differently about how you get to the finish line. You’re able to play on one computer, over a Local Area Network, or over the Internet. So if you want to play with friends, Trackmania will give you plenty of options to do just that.

One of the key things Nadeo has done with the Trackmania series is put a focus on building a community around the game. This is evident with the game’s ability to share your own created content with the world. The game features a built in browser to surf through the various tracks, car skins, mods, and other content that people have created for the game. Also for the first time, the free “Nations” and retail “United” versions of the game can play some events together. This is a nice step in bringing the two communities together.

The game has a built in track editor. It’s not that hard to sit there and put down pieces to create a track. This is one of the game’s neat tricks, as you use the track editor, a temporal field swirls around you, causing you to lose all perception of time. The last time that a game did this feature well was Broderbund’s Stunts back in 1990. Making tracks for a racing game is a feature that almost everyone who has ever played a driving game has wanted. Trackmania delivers this, and then goes one step further by giving you the facilities to put your created masterpiece online for all to play. Interestingly, tracks you upload can make you in-game money, which is a great incentive for people to put forth the effort into polishing the design.

Trackmania United Forever isn’t a bad looking game at all. While it’s certainly not in the same league visually as games like Dirt, it does manage to hold its own. Nadeo have implemented a system where the game will try to tune itself to best run on your system. If the frame rate is low, it’ll prompt you to lower details until it gets better. On the highest settings, the game looks quite nice. It has shiny cars and fun lighting effects on the tracks. On the lowest, settings it will look like a late 1990’s arcade game. Whatever graphics hardware you have, Trackmania should be able to give you a good experience.

Trackmania United Forever is a decent sounding game. The sound effects themselves are a bit weak, but they’re serviceable. The music on the other hand is actually quite good. There’s no Nu-Metal or Top-40 stuff here, just original compositions that fit the game nicely. You can also download music made by the Trackmania community. On the whole, the game sounds pretty good, and being able to add to it is a big plus.

It’s refreshing to play a racing game that isn’t about super-realism. Trackmania United Forever is a lot of fun because it goes in a totally different direction. The driving is fluid, there are plenty of game modes, and there is a ton of customization. If you remember Stunts from back in the day, then you should definitely take a look at Trackmania United Forever. If you weren’t around back then but want a fast and crazy driving game, this is the one.

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